“It explores the changing environment around news across countries. The report is based on a survey of more than 70,000 people in 36 markets, along with additional qualitative research, which together make it the most comprehensive ongoing comparative study of news consumption in the world. A key focus remains in Europe where we have added Slovakia, Croatia, and Romania for the first time – but we have also added four markets in Asia (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore) along with three additional Latin American countries (Argentina, Chile, and Mexico).”

“This year’s report comes against the backdrop of continuing concerns about how to fund journalism and the relations between news organizations and platforms, but also an intensification in news about the news, driven by attacks on the U.S. media and widespread concern about ‘fake news’. We look at issues of truth and falsehood and trust in this year’s report, where we continue to see big differences between countries and regions.”

“We have focused on two areas: (1) the extent to which people are prepared to pay for news or the different ways journalism might be funded in the future, and (2) understanding more about some of the drivers of low (declining) trust in the media. For the first time, we’ve attempted to measure and visualize relative levels of media polarization across countries and identify a link between media polarization and trust. Another focus has been on the media’s relationship with platforms – in particular how news is discovered and consumed within distributed environments such as social media, search, and online aggregators.”

Here is a video overview of the 2017 report, followed by a link to the full 136-slide PDF report.